every care, surrounded by a family of well-behaved, intelligent
children. A well-regulated household is a picture upon which the good of
either sex love to look. The responsibility of regulating and ordering a
household properly, devolves equally upon both the husband and wife. It
can not be a well-regulated house if either fails to share the
responsibility equally. Is the careful wife and mother, then, to be cut
off from the rights of citizenship because she is a wife and mother?
There is no valid reason why an intelligent woman should not be
permitted to carry the weight of her judicious influence beyond the
charmed circle of her home, any more than that she should not be
permitted to exercise it there. Even in the limited sphere now assigned
to women, many of them have proved that they could be faithful to the
interests of their husbands and children, and yet accomplish much for
the benefit of the world besides. Admitting, however--and we do admit
it, heartily--that women are endowed with peculiar talents for the
management of children, and men are better fitted than women for
training horses or managing swine,--which occupation requires the
greater mental culture? Which is likely to do the most for the benefit
of mankind? The proper care for her children, and attention to them,
does not necessarily prevent a woman from attending to matters of public
utility outside of her house.

And then there are the unmarried women, who were referred to previously,
that have not these household claims resting upon them. The objection
concerning the neglect of households does not touch their cases at all;
for they have neither children nor husbands to be neglected. That
unmarried women, who step out from the "private sanctity of their
homes," often accomplish much good by entering on the so much censured
public career, the lives of Florence Nightingale, Miss McPherson, and
Miss Dix, if there were no others, amply prove.